Peter Livolsi’s directorial debut THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW, set in a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome, is out in theaters receiving positive reviews. Bilge Ebiri in The Village Voice writes that the film, “which is based on a novel by Peter Bognanni, manages to be a touching exploration of what ‘tomorrow’ actually means.” Starring Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn, Asa Butterfield, Nick Offerman, and Alex Wolff, THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW is about a teenager trying to balance engineer and futurist Buckminster Fuller’s principles with a newfound love of punk rock. For The Wrap, Robert Abele writes that THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW “is as engagingly designed and executed as one of Fuller’s nifty, thought-provoking inventions.”

In real life, Ellen Burstyn was a friend of Fuller’s. Science & Film spoke with her about spending time with him.

“Being with Bucky was like receiving teaching at all times. I’ll give you an example. That first morning when we were in the Chicago coffee shop, we had breakfast, and then after breakfast I was still smoking then, I don’t anymore, and I said, do you mind if I smoke? He said, oh I don’t mind for me dear, I mind for you. And I said, oh you don’t smoke I guess, huh. And he said, no, I being the most sensitive receiving and sending mechanism ever created on planet earth don’t want to do anything to interfere with my receptivity. So, it was like that being with him. I one time asked him a question, and his answer was his definition of universe: a series of only partially overlapping simultaneous events. It just went on like that. Any time you were spending time with him, you were being educated because he just spoke at that level all the time.”

THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW was developed through the Sloan Foundation’s film program, receiving support from the Tribeca Film Institute program in 2015 and Film Independent in 2017. The Museum of the Moving Image and Science & Film presented it last year in collaboration with the World Science Festival.